t out and walk through a lake of mud to examine the 153
ruins of Gortyna* I follow the writing on the wall. It
tells of laws which nobody obeys any longer. The only
laws which last are the unwritten ones. Man is a law-
breaking animal. A timid one, however.

It is high noon. I want to have my lunch in Phaestos.
We push on. The rain has stopped, the douds have bro-
ken 5 the vault of blue spreads out like a fan, the blue de-
composing into that ultimate violet light which makes
everything Greek seem holy, natural and familiar. In
Greece one has the desire to bathe in the sky. You want
to rid yourself of your clothes, take a running leap and
vault into the blue. You want to float in the air like an .
angel or lie in the grass rigid and enjoy the cataleptic
trance. Stone and sky, they marry here. It is the perpetual
dawn of man's awakening.

We glide through a deer run and the car stops at the
edge of a wild park. "Up there," says the man, pointing
to a steep bluff—"Phaestos." He had said the word. It
was like magic. I hesitated. I wanted to prepare my-
self. '"Better take your lunch with you," said the man.
"They may not have any food up there." I put the sfyoe
box Under my arm and slowly, meditatively, reverently
began the pilgrimage,

. It was one of the few times in my life that I was fully
aware of being on the brink .of a great experience, And
not only aware but grateful, grateful for being afive,
grateful for having eyes, for being sound in wind and
limb, for having rolled in the -gutter, for having gone
hungry, for 'having been humiliated, for having done
everything that I did do since at last it had'culminated
in this moment of bliss,

I crossed a wooden bridge or two in the depth of the

glen and paused again in the rich mud which was over

• my shoe tops to survey the little stretch I had traversed.